


Lapis Lazuli And The Quixotic Mid-Budget Art Film

by ComaGayby



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Crack Treated Seriously, F/F, Humor, This Is Incredibly Self Indulgent, an absolutely ludicrous amount of film references, highbrow(TM), it starts out more cracky tho, its broadly humorous but is also a vehicle for discussing film theory and artistic purpose and stuff, its just a bunch of film criticism in jokes and shit honestly, lapis is pretentious and insufferable, like u dont even know, the filmmaker AU u didnt know u didnt want
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:34:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23586940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ComaGayby/pseuds/ComaGayby
Summary: Lapis Lazuli is an aloof Juilliard graduate desperate to prove her explicit art films are more than a cheap facsimile of Catherine Breillat. Peridot Green is a rote but enormously successful director from Cleveland riding off the heels of her latest hit, Dogcopter 5: Dawn of Reckoning. When the two are both chosen to work on a gritty reboot of inoffensive soap opera Camp Pining Hearts, will they gain an appreciation for the cinema of the body?
Relationships: Lapis Lazuli/Peridot (Steven Universe)
Kudos: 9





	Lapis Lazuli And The Quixotic Mid-Budget Art Film

"What's the most you've ever lost in a coin toss?"

"Pardon?"

Lapis sighed. "A coin toss."

The birdlike receptionist paused for a moment, her brows furrowing, before her eyes lit up. "Oh! You're that lady who did No Country For Aging Lesbian Farmers, if I recall-"

Lapis ignored the frankly callous comment (it had grown quite boring;) a meditation on queer ageing in a remote setting - with crime thriller elements - hardly warranted disapproving comparisons to Cormac McCarthy, and narrowed her eyes. "Earl, is it?"

"Pearl, actua-"

"Shut up. What suite is _she_ booking?"

"That's hardl-"

Pearl broke into an almost hysterical squeal as Lapis decked her in the face, scoffing at the lens shards stuck in her knuckles (it would be fine; this sort of thing provided character,) and rifled through the windows Pearl had up on her computer, before finding the spreadsheet she was looking for.

Lapis evaluated the lighting conditions, number of strangers in the lobby gawking at the scene, and her right hand's muscular ability, and chose to go ahead and flick a cigar over her shoulder. It was soggy, and Pearl's disgusted squeak was very much appreciated.

* * *

Lapis found her target, and after garroting the security guard, peeked inside the room. She herself was unsure _why_ \- it had already been well established what she would find.

Peridot was, as always, wearing board shorts and one of those abominable shirts with a tuxedo decal. Lapis shuddered, and was envious of Pearl's newfound visual impairedness. She craned her head against the door, and, regrettably, was able to make out one of Peridot's seemingly endless vacuous company addresses.

_"We have no obligation to make art, we have no obligation to make history, but-"_

Lapis kicked the door open, and, having placed another soggy cigarette between her lips, made the point of sucking on it for the sake of provocation.

Peridot was nonplussed. "Erm, who are _you?_ Is that cigar wet? Ew. Apologies if I'm being anal about this, but that is truly disgusting."

Lapis let her scornful glare carry on a few seconds longer than necessarily, before finally spitting out her response. "Oh, but I know who you are. You're just some bitch from Cleveland, _right_?"

Peridot blinked, and fiddled with her glasses. "That is where I am from, yes."

"Anal." In Lapis' mind, this sounded not only like teasing, but also as an implicit threat.

"Oh! I get it! You're that girl who directs the really bad 'art films' with unsimulated sex!"

Lapis laid down dramatically on the table, propping up her chin with her elbow in a pose not unakin to the _Pulp Fiction_ poster, and fiddled a paintbrush out of her top so that her mouth might be imbued with the cultural weight of **_a badass bitch_**. "Rich, coming from you," she drawled, "I bare my body for the sake of maximum semiotic content, and you make sterile CGI-ridden disasterpieces."

"I will never understand why Juilliard-types are so insistant upon casting aspersions concerning my potency," Perdiot sighed.

Lapis cackled like a witch, before quickly checking her Patreon revenue as she heard the boots in the hallway - what more was another bail paid for assault?

"Breaking and entering."

Lapis looked up, genuinely taken aback. "Pardon me, what?"

"You're not factoring in breaking and entering. This was an exclusive conference."

"Ah. Fuck."

* * *

In retrospect, spending weeks working through legal issues, and wasting precious amounts of her limited budget surplus, seemed a steep price to pay for the momentary thrill of gloating ineffectually at the expense of her greatest rival's comfort.

Thankfully, Lapis Lazuli was well accustomed to working on a shoestring budget. Her protege was 12 year old Steven, a genial neighborhood boy more than willing to take part in Lapis's films entirely for the novelty of it. The benefits of noncontracted child actors were many - for one, a payment in sweets (Steven was exceedingly fond of Cookie Cat) would suffice, and secondly, Lapis found his complete foreignness to acting imbued his roles with a certain kind of believability that could not be replicated with intentional acting. Mr. Universe was just pleased that his son came home each day boasting of being an 'outsider artist' - Lapis found Greg's lackadaisical but nurturing approach to parenting an independent child very endearing, though it didn't make her any more open to raising a child herself. 

Critics - Lapis's parents - had compared Steven's performance to that of Charlie Chaplain in his iconic role as the Tramp, a perspective which Lapis quite liked. 

Her latest film, _La Vie En Garbage_ (despite her Romance surname, Lapis was in no way French) centered on the strange experiences of Steven, as a wide-eyed plucky youth, as he wandered through the desolate urban landscape of Empire City - principally the alleyway behind Lapis's apartment; which, in accordance with Dogme 95, could be used without the introduction of outside props. It was truly filthy. Lapis eagerly awaited the inevitable review in at least one small arts magazine that intertwined _La Vie En Garbage'_ s filmmaking with the city's history of urban decay and government neglect, and a broad discussion of urban imagery in general. Although a staunch atheist, Lapis did pray in advance that those other reviews she received would contain no references to _Gummo_. 

Lapis's dwelling was, even by the standards of Empire City's apartment stock, on the small side. It was controlled chaos - a borderline insurmountable fire hazard, heaps of books, film reels, various technical equipment, and a wide variety of oddities were stacked in byzantine heaps that were self-sustaining only insofar as any disturbance to their contents was done with Lapis's feather light touch.

The most arresting decor was a bulletin board taking up most of the wall above her bedrest. The largest item tacked on was a large piece of cardstock, emblazoned with a hand-written rendition of _Pagliacci_. Although she supposed it was a bit trite, the sight of 'but doctor, I am l'auteur' never failed to brighten her typically icy persona with an amused smirk. The rest of the board was taken up by a hodgepodge of newspaper clippings - the bulk of these documented every instance of a magazine comparing her work to that of Joan Didion. Of course, Lapis's art was audiovisual, a striking difference, but Empire City's journals of cultural import were fond of nothing if not unwarranted comparisons to, of course, Joan Didion. One of the other scraps, and her second-most loathed one, was a critical review describing her work as that of 'a contemporary Herschell Gordon-Lewis.' The other three walls of her siphoned-off bedroom area (the apartment was a studio) each hosted their own built-in bookshelves, whose contents were labelled by country of origin, and contained a plethora of books and visual media accordingly. Ever the contrarian, under 'Japan' Lapis had no physical references for the work of Kurosawa, but did have an extensive library of Yukio Mishima, her vehement disagreements with his politics nonwithstanding. She had found space in the kitchenette for a framed printout of the Dogme 95 manifesto. 

Lapis brewed herself a cup of black coffee, and sat down at her table - foldable and plastic; small enough to fit in the suffocatingly small space of her kitchen - and began leafing through the backlog of trade journals and literary periodicals she had accumulating while contemplating the best way to promote _La Vie En Garbage_. Was gaining an audience even something she _wanted_? After pondering this, Lapis came to the conclusion that, in addition to a dedicated cult following, having films large enough to confuse and alienate the general public was something she desired. Having a cult following was important, though. She knew that whatever the public thought of her work was irrelevant to its quality, and all that matters was that _she_ was proud of it - but she would admit that in her less busy moments, lying in her musty bed, kept awake by the intermittent chatter of the city, the fact that those scant reviews she _did_ get were largely negative was genuinely painful. 

The most positive recent comment Lapis had received about her work was that with enough visual verve, and a considerably less self-serious attitude, she might day be taken under the wing of the Tarantinos and Rodriguezes of the world. Ignoring her own conflicted opinions on auteur theory, this was not quite the sort of fearless individualistic filmmaking that best suited her brand.

No, she was here to make art. Capital A art, such that if pressed as to her artistic intent, she would have no choice but to throw up her hands in cluelessness and declare herself just as uninformed as to anyone else; the conduit of artistic forces outside her control. Her work was her mercurial alien baby, and she was determined to drag it to earth, no matter how many hapless office employees had to be decked in the process. Of course, she still expected to, at long last, receive public recognition for having made the intellectual lives of the populace that much more rich.

**Author's Note:**

> idk fam


End file.
